More than the sum of its parts (and beyond its parts): Consolidating lessons to influence the ECE community via a COP

• In Event: Communities of Play: Learning Together to Improve and Scale Playful Learning

Proposal

The Play Our Part Community of Practice (POP COP) brings together implementing and learning partners to scale effective learning through play in ECE classrooms in East and Southern Africa, and influence quality ECE beyond its walls. The COP is made up of four implementing partners in Rwanda, Zambia and Uganda and is led by their Learning and Design Partner.

The COP has 2 distinct goals - one to come together to maximize the impact of the programs within the COP and the other to extend that increased impact to the rest of the ECE community:
(1) Implementing partners have a strong learning agenda, learn from partners and others and use evidence to improve their work
(2) Influence and share insights with the broader ECE community
Coordinate national-level advocacy efforts
Consolidate lessons learned into external “artefacts” to share learnings e.g. blogs, policy briefs
Develop a package of resources for the delivery of high-quality play-based approaches within ECE systems

Underpinning all of this, the COP has a shared learning agenda which marries the learning agenda of the donor with the MEL frameworks of the individual implementing partner programs. This learning agenda includes questions about all stages of program development and scaling from barriers/enablers through measurement of early/intermediate outcomes to adaptation for scale. It is deliberately designed to be followed in sequence as the programs journey towards scale.

The COP is entering its third year of its four year tenure. It meets quarterly in a virtual setting to explore and share on key topics aligned with our learning agenda. It also meets annually in-person to zoom out and review progress against answering our key learning questions, consolidate insights and plan for our policy engagement or other external sharing.

As part of our learning agenda, the COP has an explicit introspective focus on the value of the COP. We have collected feedback data from our quarterly virtual workshops, annual in-person workshops as well as about the COP ways of working as a whole. We have tried various implementation approaches and use this data to iterate on our ways of working and activities. The presentation would include a deep-dive into this COP approach with internal/external goals and the central learning agenda and share lessons learned on:


-To what extent a learning agenda can unify partners and be used as a backbone for COP - the opportunities and challenges created
-How coordinated learning/sharing via a COP can enhance the impact and scale of programs involved in the COP, as well other programs/teams within the organizations involved
-The opportunities and challenges of synthesis and coordination on advocacy - within countries where partners overlap as well as at an e.g. global level
-How a coordinated COP can develop guidance, tools and resources to share learnings beyond the convened group

Author

• Lucy Rimmington, Innovations for Poverty Action